


Cold Hands, Warm Heart

by LadyRem



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Holding Hands, M/M, Short & Sweet, soft fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-08 02:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20283853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRem/pseuds/LadyRem
Summary: A soft fic about finding a little warmth in the world.





	Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Hell is cold.

That’s the truth of it. Oh, of course there’s hellfire—a blasted white-hot flame that dries you from the inside, curling your skin and melting your bones into ash and slag. But there’s no warmth to it, no life. It burns like ice burns, and at a certain point the difference between fire and ice is meaningless. They both leave you numb.

Heaven is not much better, Crowley thinks. Not what he can remember, anyway. It’s always perfect there. Always. No sudden heat that blasts you like an open oven door, no unexpected breeze to lift the warmth from your skin and flee with it, no rain or sleet or snow that melts in your collar and drips down your neck leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. No change at all, whatever your tastes. Heaven is perfect, whether you like it or not.

And then there was earth.

Crowley’s hands are cold. And his feet, and the rest of him too. Cold-blooded in more than just deeds, he thinks. Cold bodied. But the world is warm, so warm. Even in a chilly London winter, when the sun hides behind a blanket of steel grey clouds, he can feel it. It streams through the windows, presses itself into the rooftops and parked cars, gathers in the earth and concrete of the city below until there’s no more room and it radiates back into the world.

People radiate it, too. In the dim light of winter they huddle together, their bodies like heaters, warming the air around them. Crowley doesn’t enjoy crowds, per se, but he enjoys the ambiance. The warmth left behind by an afternoon sun in a grassy, crowded plaza, moving and breathing and alive. He sought it out, loner that he was, that he was forced to be. Soaking it in. It never left him warm, really, but less cold. Less numb. It was alright. Better than nothing.

But Aziraphale. Oh, Aziraphale.

He had felt it, that first time on the wall, as the storm moved in and the wind rose, and Crowley could almost feel the cold drip from his fingers like a palpable thing in the desert wind. The angel had lifted a wing to cover him, and unconsciously the demon had leaned in. The warmth was immediate, almost overwhelming. Like the heat of sun-baked stone, radiant and bone deep. No light shone out of the angel, but it should. It could, he knew, if Aziraphale willed it. He had wanted to press close, to let the angel’s warmth bleed the cold from his fingers until he could truly feel them again.

He hadn’t, of course. He couldn’t. That was not allowed.

Over the next few millennia, as their arrangement grew and their relationship settled into a kind of routine, Crowley found himself increasingly drawn toward the angel, toward his warmth. Not just heat of him but _him._ His kindness, his wry humor, his enthusiasm and intelligence. His fiery spirit, when he didn’t censor himself for heaven. That bastardly, almost petty streak that both infuriated and amused the demon. The way he could smile casually like it was nothing, at anything, like it didn’t mean something, didn’t matter.

(Maybe it didn’t mean anything. But as the years progressed it meant so much to Crowley.)

And he had endured for so long without hope. _This is enough_, Crowley had told himself, basking in the glow of the angel as they sat together on park benches, or lounged in the dim quiet of the bookshop, or dined at the Ritz. _This is good, _he had thought, hands and knees and feet stretched out toward Aziraphale, face turned like a tree turning toward the sun, never quite touching, never quiet _there_. His hands ached with the cold, but they ached a little less around Aziraphale. _Close enough._

Too close. The aching in his hands was replaced by another kind of ache, one that had nothing to do with the cold. One that felt like falling, like screaming in slow motion, a kind of breathless burning beneath his ribs. Like running without water, every cell dry and parched and dying.

_Too close, _he thought, as the angel sat in his car and handed him a plaid thermos, and the meaning of it all seared through him like slow fire. But he couldn’t move away – _wouldn’t_ move away. Aziraphale was the first to leave, and in the rush of cold air that filled the space behind, Crowley realized (something he would realize again, someday, in the not so distant future) that he could never leave without him.

The apocalypse had come too close, too. Too close to losing it all, to losing the world, to losing himself, to losing his best friend. He hadn’t expected to lose his fear, though. He hadn’t expected to be brave.

And yet.

_You can stay at my place, if you like._

It was small at first. Just an offer. Closing the distance inch by inch and day by day, while they waited in the aftermath of the failed executions for the dust to settle, until one day on a park bench on a cool fall afternoon in London, Crowley’s hand slipped gently into the angels. Long, cold fingers wrapped around soft warm ones and intertwined while Crowley looked very earnestly at anything except Aziraphale. He could feel the warmth that radiated from them in his bones, like holding a warm cup of coffee.

Aziraphale squeezed his hand gently, and Crowley felt his heart jump into his throat.

“You’ve got such cold hands, my dear,” the angel said lightly. Crowley turned to look at him finally, swallowing down hard at the nerves that jangled in him so he could speak.

“Ah, yes, well. Snake,” he said, eloquently. “Sorry.”

He started to loosen his grip and pull the hand away, but Aziraphale just held on and drew it close to his body, bringing it between both his own hands. He breathed on them then, warm breath drifting out into the cool air like smoke, and rubbed the demons long fingers between plump palms.

“You don’t have to do that,” Crowley said weakly.

“I don’t mind,” Aziraphale said. His smile was enigmatic in that infuriating way that Crowley knew meant that he had realized something, and Crowley hadn’t quite caught up yet.

“They’re cold, though. Doesn’t that bother you?” the demon asked. He had leaned in until their knees were touching, the slouch of his body so low on the seat that he had to turn and look up to see the angel’s whole face. Aziraphale beamed down at him.

“You know what they say,” the angel said. One of his hands let go of Crowley’s as he lifted his arm up and over, until it was resting around the demon’s shoulders, pulling him closer. “_Cold hands, warm heart_, and all that.”

Crowley felt himself tense and splutter incoherently for a moment.

“I know, yes, sorry, dreadfully sentimental,” Aziraphale said, as if Crowley’s reaction had been a protest to the idiom. He squeezed the hand he held again, gently. “True all the same, though, in this case, I think.”

“Mm,” Crowley answered. Then, without any real conscious decision, he leaned his head against the angel’s shoulder.

And there, under Aziraphale’s arm on that bench in the park in the cool afternoon air, for the first time since his Fall, Crowley felt well and truly warm again.


End file.
